MFA Writing Program Visiting Artist Series: Justin Torres

Thu, 01/24/2013

Thu, 01/24/2013 - 7:30pm

CalArts, Butler Building 4

CRITICAL STUDIES: Justin Torres is the author of We the Animals, a novel comprised of portraits and vignettes, published by Random House, to much deserved acclaim, in 2011. He grew up in upstate New York. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, Glimmer Train, and other publications. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he is a recipient of the Rolón United States Artist Fellowship in Literature, and is now a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. He has worked as a farmhand, a dog-walker, a creative writing teacher, and a bookseller.

About writing his first novel, he says, For me, the magic of fiction lies in the words chosen and the structure of the sentences. I could write about men on Mars or about a childhood similar to my own, but my goal would be the same: get the words right, cast a spell.